Welcome to Bookmarker!

This is a personal project by @dellsystem. I built this to help me retain information from the books I'm reading.

Source code on GitHub (MIT license).

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You added a note
3 years, 5 months ago

no way out of her loneliness

A work of art moves us by being honest and that honesty is apparent in its language and its form and in its resistance to concealment.

Marya’s dilemma is still in effect. She’s still lonely and bored. By removing the first-order solution (Hanov), Chekhov has made his story more ambitious. In its…

—p.36 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life A Page at a Time: Thoughts on "In the Cart" (11) by George Saunders
You edited a note
3 years, 5 months ago

growing worse and worse

So, this is both a realistic description (it’s spring, snow melts, roads get muddy) and a little poem that adjusts our understanding of the story.

Roughly speaking, we understand this description to indicate: “a steadily degrading situation.” The road is “growing worse and worse.” They are drivi…

—p.28 A Page at a Time: Thoughts on "In the Cart" (11) by George Saunders
You added a note
3 years, 5 months ago

growing worse and worse

So, this is both a realistic description (it’s spring, snow melts, roads get muddy) and a little poem that adjusts our understanding of the story.

Roughly speaking, we understand this description to indicate: “a steadily degrading situation.” The road is “growing worse and worse.” They are drivi…

—p.28 A Page at a Time: Thoughts on "In the Cart" (11) by George Saunders
You added a note
3 years, 5 months ago

something new always has to be happening advice/writing

There should be a name for this moment in a story when, a situation having been established, a new character arrives. We automatically expect that new element to alter or complicate or deepen the situation. A man stands in an elevator, muttering under his breath about how much he hates his job. The…

—p.21 A Page at a Time: Thoughts on "In the Cart" (11) by George Saunders
You added a note
3 years, 5 months ago

structure as a form of call-and-response advice/writing

Here, Chekhov gives us an opportunity to reconsider the scary term “structure.”

We might think of structure as simply: an organizational scheme that allows the story to answer a question it has caused its reader to ask.

Me, at the end of the first page: “Poor Marya. I already sort of care abo…

—p.19 A Page at a Time: Thoughts on "In the Cart" (11) by George Saunders